Nannies and grandparents could be paid by the government to look after children if they get TAFE qualifications under a proposal to overhaul the nation’s convoluted childcare system.

The bewildering array of childcare subsidies should be replaced with a single, means-tested payment that would go directly to the parents' choice of provider, according to a draft report by the Productivity Commission.

Childcare is a classic case of a badly designed policy whose features are difficult to reverse. The increase in the contribution from the taxpayer has been monumental — 300 per cent in a decade — and the observed gains have been very modest, certainly in terms of increased female labour force participation.

The real problem is how some of the worst features of this policy can be reversed. The PC has taken the easy way out and decided that the only feasible path forward is to plough on with what we have. I’m not so sure — $8bn is a hell of a lot of money, some of which could easily be put to better use; by funding the National Disability Insurance Scheme, for instance.

Take welfare, for example. It is hard to believe that in his quieter moments Shorten does not accept that Australia’s quirky system needs fixing, and that reform is long overdue.

Yet the cold, hard truth about welfare reform is that, properly done, it will deliver smaller cheques — or no cheques at all — to hundreds of thousands of Australians. Most of them have the ­capacity to vote and not all of them are bludgers, as they will no doubt be telling a reporter from ABC’s AM if the government drops the slightest hint it is taking the findings of Patrick McClure seriously.

According to the ABS, in 2014 almost 20 per cent of our population have a disability and are supported by Carers making up a further 12 per cent of our population. Together they make up 32 per cent of our population that could be significantly affected by the Federal Government welfare cutbacks.

What is even more worrying is that many people with disability do not have the education and training necessary to successfully compete with unemployed people without disability. So, how do we ensure that people with disability are not damaged by the barriers created by employers?

Of the many and varied repercussions of the 2007-08 financial crisis, one that rippled across borders to impact both developed and developing economies was rising unemployment, an issue that affected young people in particular.

As part of our ongoing work to support entrepreneurship and its impact on job creation, our latest report, Avoiding a lost generation: ten key recommendations to support youth entrepreneurship across the G20, highlights some very clear and actionable guidance based on best practices adopted by governments across the G20.

Inequality is already a significant problem in Australia and this budget places a significant additional financial impost on the very generation that we should be nurturing, this budget attacks the young people of Australia.

What evidence is there to suggest that the 2014 budget is going to increase disease and quicken the spread of inequality across the community? Government officials have stated that they expect 550,000 applications for assistance in the form of food vouchers, medications, clothing and assistance with rent and utility bills.

The risk for young folk who are targeted in this budget is that they slip into a spiral of unemployment, inability to pursue education and, because of their dire social circumstances (including poor nutrition) develop mental and physical illness.

From the perspective of the global north, Australia has always been an oddity. Its policies often seem as strange and inexplicable as its fauna. “They are strange those Australians, strangers to the world,” a reader commented last year on an article about Australia’s “PNG solution” for dealing with asylum seekers arriving by boat that appeared in the French newspaper Le Monde.

Tyler Cowen has written a column on inequality, in which he notes that while inequality is rising within many economies it is falling globally. That is true, though it is worth pointing out that among the economies within which inequality is rising are large emerging markets like China and India. Still, the world's poor countries have become much less poor relative to the world's rich countries over the last few decades (though perhaps not relative to the rich in the world's rich countries) and that is unequivocally good news.

Members of Parliament regularly receive requests directly or through their electorate offices about funding opportunities for community groups. This Issues Backgrounder is designed to assist in responding to such requests. It is organised under the following headings:

... ask [Greg] Daniel whether the nation’s top chief executives need to get themselves on to Twitter, Facebook or other social networks in a hurry, his response is surprisingly contrarian.

“I wouldn’t recommend a number of CEOs run off and start using Twitter and get on Facebook. I think it is unnecessary. But I think they are aware enough to know their organisations need to be on social media. It would certainly be helpful if they had some working knowledge of how the platforms are used by the various stakeholder groups,” he says.

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Catholic Social Services Australia represents a national network of 52 Catholic social service organisations that provide direct support to hundreds of thousands of people in need each year on behalf of the Catholic Church. Our agencies provide a diverse range of support from assisting women and children escaping family violence, housing and homelessness support, to mental health and disability services. They also work in partnership with Indigenous people, and offer support and services to people seeking asylum and those who are refugees.